The Ferguson Police Department leaked to the media that the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb was beaten almost to the point of unconsciousness before discharging his firearm in defense.

Darren Wilson, whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown touched off more than a week of contentious demonstrations, suffered severe facial injuries, including an orbital (eye socket) fracture, and was nearly beaten unconscious by Brown moments before fatally shooting him, a source close to the department’s top brass told ABC News.

“The Assistant Chief took him to the hospital, his face all swollen on one side,” said the insider. “He was beaten very severely.”

The unnamed source said Wilson was coming off another case in the neighborhood on Aug. 9 when he ordered Michael Brown and his friend Dorain Johnson off the road.

Brown rebuffed the officer’s orders in an aggressive manner that quickly sparked violence, however, the source told Fox News.

“They ignored him and the officer started to get out of the car to tell them to move,” the source said. “They shoved him right back in, that’s when Michael Brown leans in and starts beating Officer Wilson in the head and the face.”

An independent autopsy conducted by a famed New York-based pathologist revealed there were no signs of a struggle before Brown was shot six times, including the top of his skull.

But the source inside the department says there is “solid proof” a struggle between Brown and Wilson took place for the policeman’s firearm, resulting in the gun going off, though it’s not clear who pulled the trigger.

Brown started to walk away, according to the account, prompting Wilson to draw his gun and order him to freeze. Brown, the source said, raised his hands in the air, and turned around saying, “What, you’re going to shoot me?”

This is when the 6-foot-4, 292-pound Brown charged Wilson, prompting the officer to fire at least six shots at him, including the fatal bullet that penetrated the top of Brown’s skull, the source said to FoxNews.com.

Wilson did not emerge from the violent altercation unscathed. The officer suffered a fractured eye socket and was left dazed by the initial confrontation, the source said. He is now “traumatized, scared for his life and his family, injured and terrified” that a grand jury, which began hearing evidence on Wednesday, will “make some kind of example out of him,” the source told the news outlet.

There is no dashboard video of the incident between Wilson and Brown. Dashboards and body cameras, which might have recorded crucial evidence, had been ordered for installation by Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson, but had yet to be put in place.

Edward Magee, spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecutor David McCullough, said the office will not disclose the nature of the evidence it will reveal to a grand jury, according to Fox News.

ABC News reports McCullough cautioned Wednesday that a decision on whether or not the officer would be indicted is more than six weeks away, at best. He said “our target date is the middle of October” for concluding the case and asking the jury to decide whether to charge Wilson. Grand juries typically meet one day a week.